The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
by Eliot Rosewater
Summary: At the Smithsonian he learned that there is a cemetery on the other side of the Potomac River. The Soldier couldn't think of a more fitting place for a ghost to go.


According to the pamphlet that he filched from the purse of a woman carrying an armful of flowers, the site the Soldier was looking for was near the center of the cemetery. According to the pamphlet, this particular site was one of the most-visited and popular memorials in the entire place. Technically, he thought, it is _next to _the most popular plot. The memorial was one of intense conversation these days, according to the talking people inside the screens, since it really wasn't memorializing that whom it was dedicated in the memory of. Because he was not dead.

_Don't remind me_.

The air was hot here, but that did not stop him from heading off down the pavement at a brisk clip in his jacket, gloves, and baseball cap. He hoped that he didn't attract too much attention. Hopefully, all the chattering flesh-bags would be discussing the still-smoking wreck in the river. No one would be looking for him yet. It was still such a mess over there that he suspected that none of the survivors had had a chance to mention the silver-armed killing machine walking among the innocent citizens. They probably all think he died fighting the flag-man. Or he drowned in one of the doomed flying fortress — he would have if the man dressed as a flag hadn't freed him from the fallen girder.

Speaking of, his abdomen was really protesting his movement now. The black contusions across his flesh ached without end and they didn't appear to be getting any better. His stomach would whine and pain him often, his throat felt like sandpaper. Was he injured? What were these feelings? They all made the maintenance warnings go off in his head, but another part of him resisted. He didn't need to go back just yet. He didn't _want _to.

(Wanting. What a novel concept. It was so new to him. He didn't think he really understood the whole 'wanting' business.)

Sweat had soaked the band of his hat by the time he came to the memorial. Few people were milling around. Most of them were too busy talking about the scandal that had occurred a few days earlier. They were either staring transfixed at their talking screens or reading obsessively all the files that had been made public by a very sneaky spider. All the better for him. Crowds made him blend in easier, but they also made his already-dry throat feel tight and painful.

He approached the gilded monster. It was not a perfect rendering of Steven Grant 'Captain America' Rogers. He didn't think so anyway. But his memory was notoriously faulty. Perhaps it was more accurate than he realized. Either way, it was impressive work. Expensive, at the very least.

He read the plaque that was mounted to the plinth. It read much the same as all of the walls in the museum. It spoke in the same tone as the voiceovers. This puzzled him greatly. In the two times that he had faced Steven Grant 'Captain America' Rogers he had not been struck with the same sentiments. What was strange was that he had _felt_ at all when he faced the mission. Something was telling him that things were wrong. There had to have been a mistake. Perhaps he needed to go back and confirm that these were in fact his orders.

If there were fewer clouds in the sky, he was sure the statue would be positively glowing and sparkling in this place (in the same way that his left arm could, if he uncovered it). An odd combination. Shining in a place meant to hold the dead. How obscene. He thought about how it was backwards that he was here now after reading about the man with whom he shared a face in the museum.

There were seven total statues, though the one depicting Rogers was the largest and most well-kept. There were flowers and wreaths, stuffed animals and candles, construction paper cards scrawled on with uncoordinated handwriting, novelties of all kinds sitting at the bases of six of the seven statues. There was nothing at the marbled feet of Rogers, which made sense. The man was not dead. Any appreciative sentiments would be properly forwarded.

"I knew you," he whispered to the golden stone.

Staring for a few moments more, he scanned each of the other statues. The faces matched those in the museum for the most part. He was only able to place names on the faces because he had just read about them and not because he could actually recognize anyone. He didn't know how he felt about that. The last sculpture he paused in front of was the one he had come to see.

_Sgt. James B. Barnes_

That's what the museum named him too.

'Bucky' Rogers had named him.

This place, he knew, was a cemetery. It was intended to house the remains and memories of those lost in service. There were no remains for Sgt. James B. Barnes. _He _was what remained. The Winter Soldier. How twisted. How wrong. Bodies are buried here, and the surviving family takes the memories with them. Barnes has no body here, so they staked a claim on his memory with this vulgar statue. He would break it if he thought he could get away with it — if he thought his abdomen could withstand the physical demand.

Painful thoughts were rising up and making his head ache and his throat feel tight. Why did he have these pains? He really should seek maintenance.

_Not yet_, a part of him whined.

So he went to sit down on a bench sheltered in the shade of a tree's branches. The statue with his face could still see the Soldier from this distance. The world tilted and his skull squeezed his brain tight. He covered his eyes with his flesh hand and tried to make it all stop.

"Hey, you! Hey!"

He whipped his head up and toward the sound. It was a woman. An _old_, _old_ woman. Ancient. Withered with skin like paper; he could see the odd texture even from a distance. His brain threw itself at the backs of his eyes when the old woman caught his gaze through her impossibly thick eyeglasses. She laid the flat of her wrinkled hand down on the horn of her motorized scooter. He liked her scooter.

"Don't just sit there like a bump on a long! I'm stuck! Come help me!"

And there was so much authority and power in her voice that he didn't even mind following the order (though he knew he didn't want to follow anyone's orders anymore). He got up and freed the little grey tire from the root of a tree that was poking out of the ground. The woman put on an unexpected burst of speed ("Ha!") and circled around to park her little vehicle at the end of the bench where he had just been sitting.

He didn't know what to do. Was she intending to stay? Should he go now? He really didn't want to sit down right next to this strange, paper-skinned woman, but he didn't know what else he wanted either. Perhaps if he stayed around she would offer him more commands. It was so _nice_ not to have to make decisions on his own.

So he sat down on the opposite side of the bench that he'd been sitting before — as far away from the woman as possible. Polite, but not distant and rude. Acceptable.

"You come to see that weenie's statue!" she yelled. It appeared that was her only volume. The woman waved an arm toward the statue of Rogers. She continued without waiting for a reply (thank God), "Don't waste your time! All the kids have been coming to see it for years! Even before they pulled him out of the freezer! One time I told those kids, I said, he was a weenie! And they didn't believe me! Kids these days!"

None of that really required a response, so he didn't offer one. He didn't think he knew _how_ to answer that.

"I knew Stevie way back before he got inflated like a balloon! He was little! None of the girls would dance with him because he was so small! He was a weenie then, and he's still a weenie now! Just in a different way! Ha!"

The woman dug around in the bag slung across the front of her scooter. He wondered where she got the vehicle. Did it require a license? It looked convenient, especially since his legs got tired so much faster these days. It would be easier to get around while the pain in his stomach and the blacker-than-black bruises across his navel recovered. Would she let him try it? She pulled a cigarette and a small lighter out of the bag. With quick and practiced hands, she lit up. Did bullets fit in there? How many knives could he hide in a bag like that?

"You must be sweating like a pig in that! Why are you all bundled up like that anyway! People are going to think you're hiding a gun in there if you walk around like that in this weather! But who needs a gun in a cemetery! Everyone is already dead! Ha!"

Even some of the people still breathing were already dead.

The Soldier said nothing.

She dug around in her bag again and pulled out a stunted plastic bottle filled with a clear liquid. The Soldier tensed when she threw it to him but caught it all the same.

"Drink it! You're sweating like a pig and your face is beet red! You'll turn into dust before I will!"

The Soldier wasn't sure if he'd ever been told to 'drink' before. Faint memories tickled in his brain about drinking from similar plastic vessels, but he couldn't be sure of any of them. Slowly, he unscrewed the lid with his right hand and brought it to his lips. The actions felt natural; he hardly thought about what he was doing. The liquid felt good on his dry tongue. Very good. _Really_ good.

_Water, _his brain told him.

Water. Of course. Of course it was water.

He swallowed it down without even thinking if he knew what swallowing was or felt like. He thought about expressing gratitude to the old woman — what a gift she had just given him — but he was too overcome with relief as the pain in his mouth and throat ebbed away. Who was this woman? She'd taught him a new command without even saying a word! And she had such an admirable mode of transportation!

Luckily, the old woman did not appear to need another person to keep up a conversation. "I've been coming here every week for nearly sixty-four years! How do you like that! I know every bit of this place! I know when the boys come to pick up all that trash that the kids on field trips leave at the Howling Commandos statues! What a waste! Leaving useless junk there when none of them are even buried here! Puh!"

What a pragmatic observation, the Soldier thought.

"I remember when they first put the statues up! I said no! I don't want it! Don't want to be any part of that! The whole family agreed with me! It was a private affair and we didn't want any statues put up like that! But no one listened to me and they put up the darn thing anyway! Disrespect! That was what it was! My parents damn near cried when they told us the memorial was open and they invited us to the unveiling! Those tears weren't from flattery or because they were grateful, let me tell you! Tore my sweet, old ma to shreds seeing what they did to him! They say people have no manners these days, but they never had any back when I was young! Ha! And that was a _long_ time ago!"

What a funny thing to say. She must have known one of the gilded monstrosities on the pedestals. Certainly was old enough.

The woman dragged on her cigarette for a while in silence. He found the scent of the tobacco somewhat calming. It was as close to 'familiar' as he had ever come to outside of a lab and a flash of life-stopping cold. Well, life-pausing cold.

Tossing the butt of her cigarette into the nearby bin, she picked up again as if she hadn't even stopped. "Listen to me complain while I still come here every week! I don't even know why I do it! I guess I never really got over it or accepted that he was gone! Would you believe that before he shipped out, I yelled at him! Didn't say I love you or be safe! Didn't even tell him to come home! Just said that I was angry and he was abandoning the family! Ha!"

His stomach squirmed in a way that was different from both irritation of the bruises and his shrinking stomach tying itself in knots. Snakes were shifting around inside him. The walls of his brain vibrated with every one of the woman's words. He thought he heard someone calling his name from very far away before he reminded himself that he didn't have a name.

"I think that's my biggest regret in life! My only regret! Not telling my brother that I loved him before he shipped out! I was so mad at him for enlisting that I couldn't even write to him — he probably would have been drafted if he hadn't enlisted anyway! Ma and Pop wrote him all the time and they said I was sorry, but he never got the words from me! It doesn't make a difference now, but I really want to tell him how much I love and miss him!"

The pain in his stomach suddenly became so intense he thought he might start dry heaving. Had she poisoned the water she'd given him? Was this all a ploy by someone trying to capture or kill him? His skull gave his brain another tight hug and his vision multiplied. Perhaps it was the heat. He _was _dressed too warmly for this kind of weather. And all of that sweating he was doing.

For better or worse, he took another slow drink of the old woman's water.

"We got a letter from that weenie one time telling us about all those POWs he'd liberated! My brother was one of them! No one would tell us anything, but we found out that he had to spend almost a month in a hospital in London! I couldn't even pluck up the courage to write him then! I was too embarrassed and ashamed that I couldn't face _writing_ to him! Conditions in that factory must have been bad! I found that out after the war! If I were him, I would hunt down every last one of those bastards who were in on that experiment mumbo jumbo and kill them all! They'd deserve it for what they did to all of those men! I'd hunt them down and demand answers before shooting 'em in the head!"

She had the tone of a commander, the authority.

"That's what I'd do if it was me and I was in a position to make them get their just desserts! But all I really want is to tell my brother I'm sorry and I miss him! Maybe I come here every week hoping that the ungodly statue won't be here and that none of it had ever happened! Ha! I used to walk in here and hope that I would see him walking the grounds in as much of a rage as I used to be in! I think he'd be as disgusted by the statues as I am! Look at me, a grown woman chasing a ghost even after seventy years!"

They watched the leaves shift with the wind for a minute. He liked the way her wispy hair floated in the breeze as if it had no mass at all. He thought of kites even though he didn't know what kite meant.

"Welp!" she said, startling him from the mesmerizing flutter of her flossy hair. "I should get going!" Digging in the front-mounted bag once more, she produced a slightly-crumpled collection of red poppies. "I have to go leave my trash next to the kids'! It keeps the maintenance guys in business!" She looked him in the eye knowingly. He supposed that he was supposed to also know what this look meant, but he didn't think he was privy to the meaning.

Not knowing what she wanted from him, the Soldier held out the bottle of water she'd given him. The liquid sloshed around inside the plastic when he moved it.

"Come find me and bring it back when you're done!" she said.

And then she and her admirable scooter were zooming away from him faster than anyone her age had any right to be moving. He reeled his arm back in and watched the weak sunlight reflect off the water.

What now?

A part of him wanted to call her back and have her talk to him until the sun was gone and risen again. He felt he could listen to her yell like that forever. Some strange part of him craved it in a way he had only ever craved this water before now. A heavy, resistive feeling settled on him. He wondered what this feeling was called. Sadness? Remorse? Regret?

She had been so smart. So authoritative. The woman sounded like his old handlers. They always knew what to do. As much as he didn't want to return to them, he didn't want to think so much anymore. A soldier such as himself always had a job and a mission. He had failed his last mission. There were no memories to tell him whether or not this had ever happened before. If it ever had, he couldn't imagine his handler taking his failure well. As new and strange as this wanting business was, the Soldier knew he didn't want to go back there.

Not now, not ever (maybe).

He had this _water_ given to him by a nice fossil on godly wheels. He _knew_ Steven Grant 'Captain America' Rogers somehow. And he knew where there were several more dens full of HYDRA and former handlers. If the museum was to be believed, he'd been a person once, with friends and a family. That must have been stripped away to mold the Winter Soldier. He wondered if he could find it again, all the pieces of Sgt. James B. Barnes that they took out of his head. Maybe he could wreak a little revenge of his own, as the old woman had suggested (her voice was made to give orders).

Yes, he would do that. He would find his missing parts — forge new ones if the originals couldn't be found — and right a few wrongs along the way. And then he would bring this woman her bottle back.

* * *

**Note: ****This is meant to take place at Arlington National Cemetery. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (also called the Tomb of the Unknowns though it has no official name) contains the unidentified remains of an American service member from the Great War, World War II, the Korean War, and formerly the Vietnam War.**


End file.
